Sour Adjunct Single Gallon Experiment

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statseeker

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Okay, so we were talking about what adjuncts and other unfermentables will ferment with wild yeasts/bacteria and what flavor profiles they would impart on the resulting beer. I mentioned that wheat flour was used as a starch, some have mentioned oats, some have mentioned flaked barley. So what I'm going to do is use all three on seperate one gallon batches to find out what characteristics they each provide as each of the wild yeast and bacteria slowly metabolize them.

For the sake of ease and equipment availability I'm doing these in extract partial mash for the oats and the barley and adding the flour directly to the boil as I've heard it done.

Base malt extract will be Briess Golden Light Malt Extract boiled to a ratio of 1.5 pounds per gallon after the 60 minute boil. Hoping for a SG right around 1.050-1.056

I feel it would be best to ferment the first 2 weeks with a neutral ale yeast (S-05) so that the elements that are best fermented are gone leaving mostly unfermentables behind for the bugs.

3 gallons will have the adjuncts. The flour will be easy, 1/4tsp added at start of the boil. A half pound of oats and a half pound of barley will be added to the others during a 30 minute partial mash at 150.

The experiment would not be complete without a set of controls. One gallon will be purely extract with no adjuncts fermented only with the ale yeast, the second purely extract with no adjuncts and the ale yeast for 2 weeks and the next 8 months with Wyeast Roeselare.

I'll be splitting the ale yeast 5 ways and the Roeselare will be split by pouring the yeast slurry into a sanitized flask and diluting it with distilled water until 400 ml is reached. 100ml of the resulting slurry will be poured into each of the four souring fermenters at week 2. I dont have the equipment or time to do cell counts so this is as close as I can get to an even experiment.

I consider the hops to be the least important aspect of this experiment. So 1 ounce of Czech Saaz will be split 5 ways, 0.2oz per gallon at start of boil for about 10 IBU.

All 5 single gallons will be fermented in the same closet, same part of the house for 9 total months. Hoping to crack the first of each open at month 10 or 11.

Any help on the specs of the experiment will be welcomed. A lot of this is just so that I can get nice round numbers, easy calculations and easy step up if one blows me away.
 
3 gallons will have the adjuncts. The flour will be easy, 1/4tsp added at start of the boil. A half pound of oats and a half pound of barley will be added to the others during a 30 minute partial mash at 150.

If you're following up on Dave Marliave's ideas from the session (discussed in the other thread), you want to add these adjuncts after the enzymes from the mash have denatured---so at a higher temperature. Otherwise the starches will just be converted. I listened to the podcast again this week, and he mentions the possibility of adding flaked oats to the boil (as you say you will with flour), but says they don't do this because it would gum up their system. I've steeped them in a paint strainer bag as the wort rises from about 180 to a boil.
 
I'd planned on steeping them in bags. Now i'll just raise the temp of the mash to 180.

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Based on what you are saying about the hops, it seems like you're planning on doing separate boils. I'd do one large boil and just do separate steeps and later additions for the adjuncts. You aren't trying to formulate a good a good recipe per se, you're trying to test how the adjuncts work.
 
I'm trying to keep the individual boils separate. I feel like doing a single boil I risk adding gravity points without knowing it where there wouldn't have been otherwise. Just wanting to keep things isolated to get the most consistent possible result of the extract.

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3 gallons will have the adjuncts. The flour will be easy, 1/4tsp added at start of the boil. A half pound of oats and a half pound of barley will be added to the others.

A 1/4 tsp vs half a pound doesn't seem to be an equivalent comparison. I would have thought you would have done better using equal weights.

You could use a pestle and morter to grind the oats and barley to a 'flour' consistency and add them to the boil.
 
I was actually thinking about this today, and came in to say the same thing Calder said. I don't think .25 teaspoon wheat flour is equivalent to the other additions.
 
But here's the thing. The oats and barley aren't staying in the beer. They're being steeped and then removed. I doubt they would entirely dissolve so their entire starch content is remaining in the beer. Also, a teaspoon in 5 gallons was the amount I remember being mentioned. A quarter teaspoon in a gallon is pretty close. I should probably just use a half pound of flaked wheat. But I wanted to test flour as an alternative to buying more adjuncts.

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Remember when you add the flour, add a little wort to the flour and make a paste, then add a little more wort until it is a liquid consistency. If you add the flour straight to the boiling wort, it will just clump and not mix.
 
Interesting experiment. I would predict that the real differences might not be apparent until the beers have quite a bit of age on them, but it will be interesting to see how it develops. Do you have an idea on what times you will be taste testing them?
 
I'll be doing my first tasting at 9 months, just a shot glass. I'm figuring the smaller surface area of the gallon batches will mean accelerated aging/flavor development of the smaller volume of beer. Could be way off in that assessment though. If at 9 months I'm seeing some distinctions in flavors between the adjunct types, I'll bottle them at low volumes w/ fresh US-05, probably 1/2 carb tab for 12 oz. and put the bottles away again for another 3 months. Check flavor development at 6 month intervals until the last bottle. Then wrap that last bottle of each up and cellar it for a special occasion, like the birth of a kid.
 
3 out of 5 of the single gallons with adjuncts done. Flaked barley, flour, and flaked oats. So far, the most vigorous ferment has been the flour. Time to sit on them for at least 9 more months.

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Finally got the control brewed up today as the final gallon of my single gallon batch experiment. The control is brewed with only the malt extract and hops. Eagerly awaiting the first tasting of the product of this experiment in November or December.

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